|
Tom Klinge
Something Wayne said remindend me of this.
As I remember it ….
When it was very snowy, the boys used to slide down the ramp. If you don’t remember, it was the ramp to the baseball field, behind the church. You would walk up a ways, maybe 50-100 feet, depending on how brave you were. You would then slide down the ramp and hope that you’d stay on your feet. To make it more interesting, we created a little snow ramp at the bottom. Only the gutsiest of us would try this and, after numerous slides, the tracks became well developed and VERY slick.
I remember Elgin used to have these green boots. He would slide down the ramp and easily hit the bottom and make the jump. At first I thought he had magic boots as he made it look so easy. But after seeing a few others do it, I thought this can’t be that hard.
I thought I’d give it a try.
Not wanting to overdo it the first time, I only walked up about 50 feet. I got into the track and started my slide. I started going faster and faster, thought it was very exhilarating and sort of a high. When I hit the bottom, my feet caught in the bottom snow jump, stopped me on a dime, and caused my body to lurch forward with my nose hitting the pavement before anything else. I immediately got a really bad nose bleed. I don’t think we had a nurse in those days, so I probably went to the boy’s bathroom and cleaned myself up.
Later Dave came up to me and sort of whispered in my ear, “When you hit the bottom, right before the snow jump, you’re supposed to jump about a foot in the air to clear it.”
I never tried it again.
|
